Kokkina transit road would ‘unimaginably’ improve lives, Christodoulides says

A transit road through the Turkish Cypriot Kokkina exclave would “unimaginably” improve the lives of Greek Cypriots who live in the surrounding villages, President Nikos Christodoulides said on Saturday.

“It is on the agenda. It is one of our proposals … which will unimaginably improve the daily life of people living in the area, and it is precisely withing this framework that I believe that, if we want to see substantial confidence-building measures which improve people’s daily lives, this is a move which can be made by the Turkish side,” he said during a visit to the area.

However, he said, so far “there has been no positive response” to this proposal.

He pointed out that he will meet Turkish Cypriot leader Tufan Erhurman on Monday, and that in this meeting, “what I will seek to discuss are substantive issues, but at the same time, I am ready to discuss confidence-building measures as well”.

The idea of a crossing point in Kokkina had formed a part of a five-item package of proposals suggested by Christodoulides during a tripartite meeting he attended with Erhurman and United Nations envoy Maria Angela Holguin in January.

Then, he had suggested that four crossing points, in Kokkina, in the village of Louroujina, between Nicosia and Larnaca, in the eastern Nicosia suburb of Mia Milia, and a through road between the town of Athienou and the southeastern Nicosia suburb of Aglandjia, be opened after the next enlarged meeting on the Cyprus problem

Since that meeting, focus on the question of crossing points has shifted to the prospect of a road linking Athienou and Aglandjia.

On this matter, government spokesman Konstantinos Letymbiotis said last week that Christodoulides had, during a subsequent one-on-one-meeting with Erhurman, “underlined the UN’s mediation proposal regarding the Athienou crossing point” , but that “this was not accepted”.

“Neither was the proposal for a pedestrian crossing point on Lidinis Street,” he said, in reference to Christodoulides’ plan for a new crossing point to be opened in Nicosia’s old town.

Erhurman disputes this version of events, saying that various solutions for the opening of a new road which would connect Athienou and the Nicosia suburb of Aglandjia had been put to Christodoulides, and that it had been Christodoulides who had rejected a series of proposals.

He had said Christodoulides had argued that Greek Cypriots “would not feel safe” driving through the north for an extended period between Athienou and Aglandjia and had instead asked that the road be routed through the buffer zone – a plan which he said would probe “problematic”, logistically, in practice.

Of the Lidinis Street crossing point, Erhurman said Christodoulides’ suggesting of it constituted “nothing more than throwing a spanner in the works and pushing the matter towards an impossible outcome”, given that crossing points which had already been suggested and accepted in principle remain unopened.